Nature or nurture?

[Pepin]

A question was asked online by someone I know who had a traumatic childhood. 

The responses were unlike anything I have ever read.  Without going into specific details about the responses, a large majority of them felt compassion for PDs (particularly BPD) - claiming that they really don't know any better. 

There was also a lot of confusion about specific Personality Disorders and how they are categorized within Cluster A, B and C and the characteristics and traits that differentiate them.   

Many people were hung up in Bipolar.  A lot of responses felt sympathy toward people that have Personality Disorders - believing that narcissists and sociopaths are really the only dangerous ones. 

Thoughts?

True or false: Personality Disorders are like most mental health problems - something more dependent on nature versus nurture.

[Call Me Cordelia]

I think the question is pretty much academic. In other words, knowing the answer wouldn't change best practices in how to cope with pwpd in real life.

Feeling sorry for them often just puts people prone to codependency into accepting the unacceptable. I think it takes maturity to feel sorry for someone and still take no shit from them. Most of us, here anyway, have too much compassion.

I disagree that most mental health problems are based in nature and not nurture. Perhaps they are thinking of stuff like schizophrenia? But depression and anxiety alone are affecting something like 1/4-1/3 people at some point in life.

[SparkStillLit]

I guess it's easy to excuse away somebody's behavior when it's not you and your family affected by it. Or maybe even when it is, it's easier to say "oh they can't help it". Well maybe they can and maybe they can't, but it doesn't obligate us into being their target or helping them. To me, "feeling sorry" implies the obligation. Trying to escape that now, thanks. Never doing it again.

[blacksheep7]

A question was asked online by someone I know who had a traumatic childhood. 

The responses were unlike anything I have ever read.  Without going into specific details about the responses, a large majority of them felt compassion for PDs (particularly BPD) - claiming that they really don't know any better. 

There was also a lot of confusion about specific Personality Disorders and how they are categorized within Cluster A, B and C and the characteristics and traits that differentiate them.   

Many people were hung up in Bipolar.  A lot of responses felt sympathy toward people that have Personality Disorders - believing that narcissists and sociopaths are really the only dangerous ones. 

Thoughts?

True or false: Personality Disorders are like most mental health problems - something more dependent on nature versus nurture.

Hmmmm, I would go more on the «nurture» side imo and ime.   My Narc parents lacked nuturing in their childhood and NF was abused and repeated the pattern.

NM took over his way of dealing conflicts with emotional blackmail, entitlement etc. when nf died. 

She lacks nuturing and empathy which go hand in hand.    She also  learned and watched NF operate for fifty years to apply his narc tactics.   So is that nature or nurture?????

Good question.   I guess it depends on the individual and his/her background.

All in all, «cluster B Narcissists» do know and are aware of what they are doing.   Their  «sorry» is just a «oops, I got caught». 

Just like the defendent  in a murder trial that was just pronounced guilty, he cries for his loss of freedom not for the victim.

[Andeza]

I'm with CMC, nature or nurture doesn't change the way we handle the relationship, and that's ultimately what matters.

I believe that all those people siding with the pwPD are uninformed, or worse, have someone like that in their life and they're spouting off according to the programming that's been ingrained in them since forever. In other words, people siding with pwPDs may be deeply in FOG themselves.

Now that said, I feel sorry for my M, that she lives in this twisted world that exists in her head. However, it's her decision to continue living in it. Especially when a way out has been offered, I find it impossible to feel guilty, or obligated, or otherwise FOGged. It's possible to both feel sorry for someone and also not engage with that person.

[guitarman]

I've learned not to do "Idiot Compassion" any more where I am the idiot. It's a Buddhist term.

I used to minimise and excuse my uBPD/NPD sister's behaviour as mental illness. Now I call her my abuser and that I am her target of abuse.

Abusers are all about power and control.

Abuse hides in the darkness. We all need to shine a light on it wherever it occurs.

[clara]

I think it's generally believed that PDs are born with the tendency but it's the home environment that determines how the PD will develop.  So, someone with the tendency that never develops into full-blown, overt PD is not someone you realize is a PD.  As an anecdotal aside, I've never known a PD who didn't come from a dysfunctional family.  But, I've also known people who came from dysfunctional families who weren't PD. 

But I agree that it's a moot point.  By time the PD is an adult, it's generally too late to change anything.  Feeling empathy for them, sorry for them, whatever for them, doesn't change them.  I don't think there's a problem with feeling that way, but turning that feeling into action is something different.  I can feel bad for the person, but that doesn't obligate me to DO anything, or to tolerate anything.  They are unfortunately who they are, but them being who they are doesn't mean they have some right to bleed into my life.  I always take the stance that's its MY right to protect myself first.  PDs hate that, and they want you to cater to them, and have seemingly endless ways of trying to get you to do just that.  Sympathy and empathy are nice to have but they probably won't change anything in the dynamic.

[Pepin]

But I agree that it's a moot point.  By time the PD is an adult, it's generally too late to change anything.  Feeling empathy for them, sorry for them, whatever for them, doesn't change them.  I don't think there's a problem with feeling that way, but turning that feeling into action is something different.  I can feel bad for the person, but that doesn't obligate me to DO anything, or to tolerate anything.  They are unfortunately who they are, but them being who they are doesn't mean they have some right to bleed into my life.  I always take the stance that's its MY right to protect myself first.  PDs hate that, and they want you to cater to them, and have seemingly endless ways of trying to get you to do just that.  Sympathy and empathy are nice to have but they probably won't change anything in the dynamic.

This. Just this. 

Which leads me to ask: does anyone know a PD that has successfully changed?  With a couple hundred responses logged in response to the original question, most people seemed to be more supportive of PDs rather than the victims/survivors of PDs.   



This is very telling to me about how *blind* these people are about understanding the damage that PDs are capable of - and this filters through to family court systems, health care professionals and even therapists not seeing what is going on. 

[clara]

Yes, exactly.  It's fine to have compassion for a PD, but it can come awfully close to excusing.  I mean, if you told a PD you had compassion for them, would they even know what you were talking about?  Or would they, more likely, find a way to use your emotional response to their advantage?  I think compassion for a PD is best kept compartmentalized.  Don't let emotions on their behalf allow them just one more opportunity for manipulation. 

[1footouttadefog]

I have come to believe that to a very large extent personality disorders arw character disorders.

Feel free to disagree, I was on the other si de of the fence at one time and totally get it from the other perspective.  I might even flip flop of I find convinsing information to the contrary.

My pdh has several mental health diagnosis.  After medications the PD stuff is what is left.  Amazingly I can be managed is the right people are around. 

[athene1399]

I feel that PDs are like any other chronic illness. If you don't take responsibility to manage the symptoms, then it will get out of control. I don't think it matters if the illness was inherited or if their childhoods led to it. They still have an illness and can choose to do nothing or choose to work on managing the symptoms (which isn't easy, but what chronic illness is easy to deal with?).

I can have compassion for what they went through, but have a tendency to get irked if they do nothing to manage their symptoms. I have a tendency to take that personally becasue I have had a traumatic childhood and put a lot of hard work into managing emotional regulation or catching myself when I say things that are manipulative. Maybe it's not the same, but people diagnosed with Schizophrenia can learn to recognize hallucinations. They can learn how to better manage symptoms or what to do in the event of a crisis. People with diabetes can work on changing their diet and taking their medication. I feel it should be no different if you have a PD.

But this is also just my personal opinion.

[Rose1]

I tend to agree. I've also worked on a bunch of fleas I didn't like and therefore know its possible. Somewhere a pd must have some realisation that the problems always happen to them. And logic would dictate after a while that I might be the common denominator.
However exbpdh 's doctor told me that the behaviours are learned and work for them and why change? Why not just apply more pressure as things don't work? In his case he learned from his mother. 
At times I saw genuine effort to change but the clarity never stuck. Maybe its too hard? Maybe reverting to default is inevitable? Maybe life without getting your way all the time isn't much fun.  Or maybe as some say, what they see in themselves is so painful they shy away from it. I have no idea. He never said in his moments of clarity. I suspect life without getting your way isn't much fun and worse still commits you to responsibilities that you can successfully dodge with pd behaviour,  but I could be doing him a disservice.  Comes back to how much you're prepared to put up with i guess

[GettingOOTF]

There is a growing school of thought that things like PDs and addiction are the result of childhood trauma. Trauma is all sorts of things - seeing parents fight, having to worry about adult issues like money etc., not being picked up from school. It can be small things, not necessarily catastrophic trauma like being abused an uncle or a parent being unfaithful. It's anything that shakes a child's sense of security.

Childhood needs are very well established. There is a lot of information out there on these needs (which are fairly simple) and the impact of those needs not being met.

I had a traumatic childhood where many of my needs were not met. I had addiction and abuse in my home life but before things got out of control my parents had a few "normal" years. By the time my youngest sibling came along the dysfunction was in full force. I've noticed that each of us recreated our parents marriage as it was when we were in our formative years. I think this is why I am more resilient than my siblings and have been able to find healing. I had a fee critical early years where some needs were met which allowed me to develop in ways my siblings were not. My parents were well respected and well liked. We lived in a nice home etc. Behind closed doors was a different story.

I agree that it's an academic argument. I could see my BPDxH's childhood in his behaviors but at the end of the day that didn't excuse his behaviors.

I believe that some people are capable of healing and some simply are too far along. I believe strongly that it's every single person's responsibility  to deal with their own trauma so it doesn't impact others. If someone chooses not to or were too "damaged" in childhood it's not my responsibility to fix or support them.

PDs and people in general are very complicated. It's not one thing that you can go back and identify and then fix. It's a million different interactions over the course of a lifetime. I suspect many are not even able to identify it themselves.

I think many people have Fleas but as children learn by what they see these fleas can be misdiagnosed by society (spouse, colleagues etc.) as a PD, but again everyone is responsible for addressing their own behaviors. I used to be covered in Fleas and I suspect I was anything but pleasant to be around for most of my life. I was a classic Codependent fixer . This showed in the quality of friendships and relationships through most of my life. In the situations that I accepted into my life.

That said I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to see my upbringing for what it was. I still battle with this. Children grow up thinking their home life is "normal" and that is so very deeply ingrained In is. It's terrifying and incredibly painful to acknowledge anything different.

Children establish much of their beliefs and personality traits by the age of 7. Everything else that happens to them pretty much reinforces that. Yes it's possible to undo some of this but it takes a lifetime of work and before that starts there needs to be a willingness to do that work.

Most people live life on autopilot and are perfectly happy to stay where they are, when when they are unhappy with their situation. 

For me I have chosen to walk away from anything to do with PDs, addiction and a host of other non-functional lifestyle behaviors. I leaned to have compassion for people but I also leaned that I was not given this life to fix other people.

At the end of the day what matters is how someone treats me. Their reasons are irrelevant, however valid they may be.

[moglow]

I feel sorry for my M, that she lives in this twisted world that exists in her head. However, it's her decision to continue living in it. Especially when a way out has been offered, I find it impossible to feel guilty, or obligated, or otherwise FOGged. It's possible to both feel sorry for someone and also not engage with that person.

This is where I am too - I can have compassion that mother is so lost in the world she sees/has created, and also know without a doubt that I want no part of it. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive but for me there has to be separation so there's no more damage.

But to clarify, my/her situation may be slightly different. While I'm sure mother's childhood was difficult (poor country family during the Depression, her mother was ill for some time after her youngest of nine children was born, her father likely alcoholic and running moonshine) the stories I've been told speak of a somewhat privileged child. Mother wasn't disciplined, no one was allowed to correct her. She ran roughshod over the entire family, including her own mother, and it was laughed off.

They tolerated and encouraged her ridiculous tantrums her whole life, made excuses for her even to the four children she bore and abused. Any normal inconvenience is blown all out of proportion into a personal affront, any attempt to state a differing opinion or point of view, is a personal attack. At least two of her sisters were very similar, and are not missed by their children.

Nature exacerbated by nurture, is my synopsis.

[Seven]

That said I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to see my upbringing for what it was. I still battle with this. Children grow up thinking their home life is "normal" and that is so very deeply ingrained In is. It's terrifying and incredibly painful to acknowledge anything different.

  I came to this website initially because of my MIL, only to come to find that while I thought that because I wasn't from a broken home, that of course my large family of 9 was "normal".  Oh, how wrong I was.  Mom is the covert uNPD, dad was the enabler, and all 7 of the kids had their assigned roles: GC, SG, clown, lost child, etc.  A bunch of us went into dysfunctional marriages trying to "fix" the other person, trying to make them happy, just like we've had to manage our mothers emotions (make her happy)  growing up.  Some of them still are trying to do it.

Example: Bro5 (58yo) has been diagnosed with another brain tumor (his second one.  First was 32 years ago.  I was a teen).  Craniotomy is scheduled in a few weeks.  We all have a zoom call to try to figure out what to do with him after since he is single, in massive debt, mother is (and has been for years) syphoning him money.  I'm the only one close in proximity to him.  Sis4 gets a phone call from 90yo mother, her crying that she wants to take care of Bro5 when he is discharged.  Now all Sis4 is trying to do is make uNPDm happy. I mentioned one of two options: send mom to Bro6 while I deal with Bro5 or send Bro5 down to Bro6.  Sis4 said "mom won't like that". And I keep saying "this is not about mom!"  These people have been so trained to regulate her emotions it's not even funny. And I know that Bro5 doesn't want to have mom taking care of him.  He didn't even want to talk to her on the phone when he was in the hospital or 2 weeks  in July for Covid/not-Covid issues (basically he had every symptom, almost didn't make it through the night, but 4 negative tests).

Ready to hear what Bro5 wants?  He wants his GF/FWB/long-time-family-friend who lives 5 hours away to come take care of him.  Problem is, she is brain damaged and on disability from her own brain tumor, can't walk more than 20ft at a time without having to stop, also has a 90yo mother who can't be left alone, and plans on bring her down too, and the 90yo mother would sleep on Bro5 couch. That's what he wants.  Bro5 says jump: GF/FWB says how high?  I mean, it's great Bro5 is trying to find his own solution, but it is a bad one...just like every other life choice he has made....just like my mother.

Sis4 also thinks I should be cancelling my vacation that we booked last month (to visit her no less) that is scheduled to start right after Bro5 is due to get out of hospital. 

So yep, I'm psyching myself up for this zoom call scheduled to start in about 3 hours.

It is this website that has helped me grow into the person I am today.  I have a feeling some of sibs won't like me eventually, and some of them will actually have some respect for me now.  I have no problem John Wick-ing myself right out of this family (going excommunicado)

[Prototypian]

I know that I feel sorrow and empathy for anyone stuck in a problem.   I wish I could help them see a path forward.   I just know that in the case of my spouse who is undiagnosed OCPD she literally doesn't believe in any way that any of the anger she feels, hoarding, control or need to make others believe in a moral way is not completely normal. 

So I genuinely feel both sorrow and at the same time wish it would stop. 

I actually think the behavior in this case comes from living under an OCPD mother who eventually passed away out of neglecting her own health

The tough thing for me is that I see the same behavior in my girls.   I worry I'm screwing up by not stepping in and I worry I'm screwing up by not leaving and I worry I would screw up if I left.

It's very difficult for me.

[Fulcrum29SMT]

I'm definitely more on the nurture side than on the nature one. Of course, no parent would willfully raise their child to have personality disorders, but there are many things that could create them: apart from abuse, traumatic events etc., there could even be problems caused by things that are seen as normal, if not good, by the child's family.

For example, studying is good, right? But a child who's deprived of social life (sleepovers with friends, sports and games on weekends...) for the sake of studying could grow up to lack social skills and be involuntarily violent or unpleasant to other people, because they lack a sense of normalcy. A child whose elementary school friends grew up in middle/high school to be different from him could be affected by a feeling of abandonment and inadequacy. A kid could feel crushed by their father/mother figure if their  parents love each other a lot.

And if you take into account that what affects one person will leave another one unfazed, you get an idea of how difficult it could be to find out what was the seed of a personality disorder that was planted in a person's mind and caused them, later on, to be toxic to their partners, friends, families.

[DetachedAndEngaged]

Personality disorders are sets of learned coping mechanisms that serve survival purposes in the face of trauma, but make healthy relationships difficult, if not impossible, in the broader world. They are not natural and inevitable, nor are the illnesses.

That said, of course PDs have a genetic basis. All human life has a genetic basis. The ability to speak has a genetic basis, but what language you speak depends on one's upbringing. Any normal human baby is capable of learning any language, but no chimpanzee can. Just like no human, even the best power lifter ever, will develop the upper-body power-to-weight ratio of an adult chimp.

All humans face traumas to greater or lesser degrees. Some coping habits foster healthy relationships, some don't.

Without going into specific details about the responses, a large majority of them felt compassion for PDs (particularly BPD) - claiming that they really don't know any better.

The PDs I've known and know (mostly BPDs and insecure NPDs) are aware of how inappropriate their behavior is, at least in retrospect--they know better. Most of them feel shame about it and this feeds a nasty downward spiraling feedback loop of emotional dysregulation and/or craving for narcissistic supply. Though she's quite amoral and shameless, even my grandiose uNPD SIL recognizes how badly she comes across in public and doesn't let her full rage come out like she has in private. People can change, but it isn't easy. Overall, they find it easier to DARVO than to take responsibility, look themselves in the eyes and act differently. Old habits are vampires.

Feeling sorry for them often just puts people prone to codependency into accepting the unacceptable. I think it takes maturity to feel sorry for someone and still take no shit from them. Most of us, here anyway, have too much compassion.

This 100x. One of my mottos is "I feel sorry for them... from a distance, but not sorry enough to want to have much to do with them."

does anyone know a PD that has successfully changed?

To some degree, yes. My uNPD father reigned in his angry outbursts and attempts to control my life when I NCed him for several years in my early 20's. He's still fundamentally an uNPD and I'm LC with him and my enabling mom, but once he figured out that I meant business he apologized and has kept it together much better. There have been a couple of angry relapses that I've dealt with through NC, but mostly he stays chill.

That said, the main reason I can enjoy video chats every month or so and a couple days/year face-to-face interaction is that I only engage when I'm in the mood, watch for signs of his emotional escalation, redirect his attention and quickly withdraw once I'm not enjoying myself.  Mom I can handle face-to-face very well, but they are a package deal at this point of their life.

So, I'd say that it really isn't so much that my dad has changed as that I have made my boundaries clear and he values a relationship with me enough to watch his step.

[GettingOOTF]

Personality disorders are sets of learned coping mechanisms that serve survival purposes in the face of trauma, but make healthy relationships difficult, if not impossible, in the broader world. They are not natural and inevitable, nor are the illnesses.

That said, of course PDs have a genetic basis. All human life has a genetic basis. The ability to speak has a genetic basis, but what language you speak depends on one's upbringing. Any normal human baby is capable of learning any language, but no chimpanzee can. Just like no human, even the best power lifter ever, will develop the upper-body power-to-weight ratio of an adult chimp.

All humans face traumas to greater or lesser degrees. Some coping habits foster healthy relationships, some don't.

This is the best explanation I've ever read on the subject. Thank you.